Never one to miss a chance to slam President Donald Trump, Lawrence O’Donnell -- host of The Last Word, a weeknight program on MSNBC -- called the Republican occupant of the White House “the laziest, most ignorant president in history.”
Of course, he had an entirely different opinion of former Democratic President Barack Obama, who “never once said something like this in the crusade to get that thing passed because he knew how to stay with it and get it passed.”
The liberal host began the discussion by criticizing the American Health Care Act, the House GOP bill intended to replace Obamacare and the differing opinions on the bill held by the president and the Republicans who have a majority of members in the Senate and the House of Representatives.
O’Donnell stated:
That's why this is so devastating. If you are a House Republican, and this is a tough vote for you, the president is saying to you on the front page of the New York Times tomorrow: ‘I quit, and I quit in the Senate.”
“I do not have the patience or the ability to stay focused on this and get it through the Senate, which is much harder than getting it through the House.”
Panelist Steven Brill, an American lawyer and journalist who wrote a book on health care entitled America’s Bitter Pill, responded: “I agree with you, but let’s put one thing in perspective.”
“As someone who watched Obamacare,” Brill stated, “it took 15 months. It was dead at least ten different times. Even if it doesn’t pass tomorrow, they could do something else and they could come back to it, and they might.”
That was when O’Donnell unleashed his venom toward Trump and praised Obama.
Then Joshua Barro, a journalist who currently contributes to Business Insider as a political commentator, presented a somewhat different perspective:
He’s lazy and ignorant, but he has a really good marketing sense.
He knows that this is not really what he ran for president on. He talked about it because Republicans have to talk about it, but he ran about trade and crime and immigration and making America great again.
In addition, Trump “was saying that he’d give insurance for everyone,” Barro stated. “He understood that this is not something Americans wanted, and I think that was against his better judgment to listen to (House Speaker) Paul Ryan about doing this first. He should have started with a tax cut.”
In an article posted on the Free Beacon website by Chandler Gill, the media analyst noted that the president “reportedly told congressional Republicans on Thursday that he was done negotiating on the American Health Care Act.”
Gill noted that Trump “apparently told GOP lawmakers” that they needed to vote on the plan Friday in its current form or live with the Affordable Care Act remaining in place.”
The conflict among Republican officials also drew the attention of Matthew Belvedere on the CNBC cable television channel, who interviewed White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney early Friday.
Referring to Trump, Mulvaney said he "is not a politician. This is a businessman, and he thinks the time has come to a vote.”
Many members of the Freedom Caucus didn't believe the GOP health bill went far enough to eradicate Obamacare's framework, Belvedere stated.
“Trump is prepared to move on to other legislative priorities such as tax cuts for individuals and corporations and updating the nation's infrastructure systems,” Mulvaney said before noting:
He has other things he wants to do. Impatient is not the right word. Busy would be the right way to describe this president.
He doesn't want to spend the time for the next two, four, six, eight months, whatever it would take. That's what it would take if you let the House go about its own business.
It now appears that the president can devote his time to other matters since Republican leaders in the House abruptly pulled the health-care bill on Friday afternoon, according to an article in the Washington Post.
Not surprisingly, the reporters claimed: “The decision means the Affordable Care Act remains in place, at least for now, and a major GOP campaign promise goes unfulfilled.”
“It also casts doubt on the GOP’s ability to govern and to advance other high-stakes agenda items, including tax reform and infrastructure spending,” they added.
O’Donnell and his fellow liberals at MSNBC will probably gloat about the GOP’s failure to pass the bill for a while, but Trump still has about three years to push through another version of the health-care proposal.
